Glimmers of Justice Gorsuch’s Prospective IP Jurisprudence

On April 10, 2017, Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court, filling the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia. While on the Tenth Circuit, Justice Gorsuch wrote opinions on complex trade secret, copyright, and trademark issues in a detail-oriented manner that indicates balanced treatment of intellectual property owners and challengers. His intellectual property opinions delve into complicated issues and thoroughly explain his reasoning. But his criticism of Chevron deference, exemplified in his concurring opinion in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch (2016), raises questions about how he will approach agency interpretation of intellectual property laws.